We recently ran into attendee and friend of CWC, Maggie Kast. We were impressed with the strides she made in her writing career, so we asked her now CWC helped her get there. Here’s what she had to say:

What did Maggie gain from CWC 2015?

“I heard Laurie Scheer speak twice at the last Chicago Writer’s Conference, and she steered me to Jane Friedman’s excellent literary website, where Jane kindly ran my guest post, The Feel of Real: On Researching a Novel. This post got more response on Twitter than anything I’ve ever done.

“Laurie also mentioned J. Ryan Stradl, best-selling author of Kitchens of the Great Midwest and fiction editor of The Nervous Breakdown. I contacted him, and he offered to review my new novel, A Free Unsullied Land, published by Fomite Press. The novel will be featured there on February 16 with a review and self-interview.”